


Red Side Of The Moon

by coloursflyaway



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: When he sees Loki again, half the universe has died.





	Red Side Of The Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Jaimie, for reading this before I posted it, and for complimenting the parts I was most proud of.

When he sees Loki again, half the universe has died.  
Thor is older than most beings can even imagine, and yet he has spent night after night awake, unable to wrap his head around the sheer number of people who have stopped existing in the blink of an eye, in the closing of a single fist. Because he wasn’t fast enough, didn’t aim well enough, because he tried and failed.  
It’s a burden too heavy to bear, even for Thor’s shoulders and yet there is no way but to continue walking, because against all reason, there is still hope. Or so he has been told.  
Believing it is a different story.

But it is the last possible thread to latch on, so Thor does, keeps the small word etched into his heart, his very being, and in nights like this, when the darkness is so impenetrable that even Thor’s lightning-struck eyes cannot see, it’s the only light left.  
He’s still on Earth, because he can’t see how leaving would change anything, and by now, he is so used to its noises that the sound of a gust of wind whispering through the curtains, the soft creaking of the floorboards are not enough to rouse him any longer.  
What does, though, is his mattress dipping down as someone sits down next to him.

He shoots up, one hand already outstretched to summon his lightning, but the figure in front of him is slim but tall, with long hair and a posture that seems too familiar to be a coincidence. It takes his mind a few moments to understand, but not his body.  
Instead of calling his lightning, feeling it crackle across his skin and turn the room blue and cold, his hand reaches out and grabs the person’s shoulder, forces them to turn around and face him.

And it’s when he sees green eyes, framed by dark hair and pale skin, when those eyes recognise him just as much as Thor recognises them, that his mind catches up with the rest of him. It almost feels like his heart has recognised Loki before his brain has.  
There are no words, not even Loki’s name, which he can force off his lips, so he stops trying before he even has begun, and instead allows himself to take in his brother’s – for Loki will never be anything but his brother, his childhood’s playmate and confidante, his family – face, the cupid’s bow of his lips, the sharp line of his jaw, the slope of his shoulders.  
He’s so beautiful Thor would be convinced he was a fever dream, if not for the hand he still has on Loki’s shoulder. Because he doesn’t look real, but he feels it, bones and blood under thin skin.

A century might have passed in which neither of them moves, Thor cannot tell, because it wouldn’t be the first hundred years he has lost to Loki’s face, his touch, his presence.  
But then Loki’s lips curl into one of his thousand smiles, one that is without joy, just laced with a cruel kind of irony.  
“If I’d known you’d be awake tonight, I wouldn’t have come”, he says and his words seem to cut through the cool air like the daggers Loki is so fond of, and yet the sound of his voice alone is enough to make Thor’s heart begin to thaw.  
“Tonight?” he asks, and somehow it’s easy to speak now that Loki has been the one to break the silence. “Have you been here before?”  
“Many times.”

There is something comforting and something cruel about knowing that Loki has been here and yet he hasn’t seen him before, when the one thing, which has haunted him the most over the months and months that have passed, has been Loki’s face in front of him. His last words, his body twitching in Thanos’ grip, his lifeless form on the floor as Thor huddled close to it and watched their ship be blown to pieces.

Loki’s eyes have left his face, like he can’t bear to look at Thor any longer, and a part of Thor wants to reach out and force him, another part of him is glad for it.  
“You didn’t wake me.”  
It’s not a question, not an accusation, just a statement, and yet Loki seems to flinch, as much as could ever allow himself to do so. His eyes stray even further from Thor’s face, fixate on something on the wall behind him.  
“I didn’t.”  
For a moment, Thor doesn’t know if he wants to ask the question burning on his tongue, and risk driving Loki away, but in the end, it’s out of his control. His lips move without Thor telling them to, his tongue curls around them, and they spill from his mouth like water, like ice.  
“Why?”

Another year passes in silence around them, or so it seems, and it’s when Thor has almost given up on hope of hearing anything from his brother ever again, Loki speaks.  
His voice is softer than Thor has ever heard it, barely more than a breath, but it almost feels like a physical touch to Thor. Because he’s not used to hearing anything but scorn from Loki for centuries, and this now, these few, precious words, sound like the truth.  
“Because leaving is easier when you haven’t looked at me.”

Sometimes the truth feels like a punch, sometimes like a caress, and this time it’s both. For a moment it feels like the air has been forced from his lungs, leaving Thor sitting there with his lips parted, and his tongue paralysed.  
It’s not a confession of love, but it’s as close to one as he will get, and he knows it; they have been like this since the beginning of time, it feels. Loki the moon, and Thor the sea he pulls in, before he pushes it away once more.

He cannot speak, so he does the next best thing: slides the hand he still has on Loki’s shoulder up to his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin, the pounding of blood against his palm. It’s a shock almost, feeling life rush through his brother’s body.  
The touch is enough to make Loki look back at him, and there has always been something special about Loki’s eyes – he is the best liar Thor has ever met, and yet in the few instances he’s been caught, it has been his eyes giving him away.  
And they shine now too, just like they did when they were mere children, even though the light filtering in from the street is dim, they shine with something Thor doesn’t dare put a name on, in fear that even this could be enough to drive Loki away. But even nameless, it’s enough to make Thor’s heart sing.

Loki hasn’t moved an inch, and although it most likely isn’t an invitation, Thor takes it as such, drags his thumb across Loki’s throat, like his brother has drawn a blade a thousand times before, ending more lives than either of them ever cared to count. Beneath his touch, Thor can feel Loki’s breath hitch.  
He does it again, feeling bolder, and Loki’s pulse quickens, spelling out the one thing Thor has always known to be true against his fingertips.  
Until Ragnarök truly comes, they’ll circle each other, always pushing, always pulling, but in the end unable to leave the other’s orbit.

And maybe his hand is caught in just that push and pull, because Thor couldn’t stop its way if he tried, as it slides up further, fingers brushing across pale skin until they can cup Loki’s cheek. Every inch is a risk he takes, because there have been as many instances of Loki allowing this as there have been in which his brother pushed Thor away.  
This time, in this night which makes every second that passes seem more like a dream than reality, Loki lets Thor touch him, even if he doesn’t lean into the touch as Thor craves him to. But they are not mere boys anymore, when Loki still looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes in their shared bed, his lips parted as if readying themselves to beg for another touch, another word, another kiss.

There is nothing to do but take what he can get, so Thor lets his thumb brush across Loki’s cheek, feeling the bone beneath the too thin flesh; it’s a blade he could cut himself in half with, and yet there is no ounce of fear in his heart.  
Loki has tried to kill him, will do so again, because it’s the choreography they have been destined to dance, but not now, not today. Not when there is sadness in the line of Loki’s mouth, longing in the green of his eyes.  
He’s perfectly still, which seems strange for someone who usually is like water, unstoppable and always moving, and Thor takes advantage of it.

It happened once back at the ship that took them away from their dying world, with tears on Thor’s cheeks and silence on Loki’s tongue, and a thousand times before that, but with Loki, no kiss has ever been like another. When they were younger, they used to taste sweet, then hungry when they came home from battle. Angry and cruel as they grew, but also passionate, also trusting. Teasing and taunting sometimes, then used the same way a knife, a spell could have been.  
That last kiss was all of it and more, laced with the sadness only someone who has lost everything could understand.

Thor doesn’t know what kind of kiss to expect, or if to expect to get any at all, but he leans in anyway, watching Loki’s face closely. Green eyes are fixed on him, but Loki neither moves closer nor away, just stays still, like he is observing from a galaxy away.   
And it’s not what Thor wants, but what he gets, what he takes, because he knows Loki well enough to know it’s all his brother will offer.

Their lips meet, and for a moment, Thor is all he ever was and all he will be at once, from young boy to dying man, from being furious with his brother to loving him so much that even Thor’s own body seems incapable to holding the feeling. It’s everything and nothing at all, and the hand he still has on Loki’s cheek hardly seems enough to ground him here.  
Loki is still unmoving, but Thor kisses him with every ounce, every sliver of feeling he has inside of him, licks his anger into Loki’s mouth and smears his love across his lips, bites his desperation into his brother’s flesh and breathes into him the knowledge that without the other, neither of them could be.  
It’s a kiss that is an end, and a new beginning all the same.

When Thor breaks away, Loki looks the same as before, only with lips kissed pink, with a flush on his cheeks that tells Thor that, no matter what his brother will say, he felt it too.  
His hand is still on Loki’s cheek and he leaves it there for a moment longer, maybe two; when he lets it drop to his lap again, he almost thinks he sees Loki trying to chase his touch. And it’s only then that Thor sees his brother’s eyes.  
They’re burning with a fire he has never seen before, almost hot enough Thor can feel it on his skin. It’s desperation and it’s longing, it’s passion and it’s fury, it’s sadness and joy all wrapped in one, burning through him, through his soul, touching every particle that makes Thor himself and altering it ever so slightly.  
He only notices that there are tears in his eyes, slowly running down his cheeks, when Loki gets up from the bed, his movements like quicksilver and ink.

“Won’t you stay?”, Thor asks, after a moment has passed, and Loki looks back at him, the fire still there, but dimmer now, as if Thor has robbed him of half of it. There is no point in waiting for the answer, not really, because he knows it already, but that doesn’t change any of it.  
He needs to hear Loki say it, if only so he can believe his brother was truly here.  
And Loki smiles with eyes so sad they could drown the world in tears, with the tension of his muscles screaming desperation, longing, and Thor looks at him, knows he will continue to look at him as long as he possibly can.  
“One day”, Loki answers, and Thor blinks.

When he opens his eyes again, Loki is gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)


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